Case Soft
The Case for Irish Drug Policy Reform by Ruaidhrí O' Conghaile
Prohibition:
It is now fifty years since the initiation of the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. It is also 40 years since Ireland's first major policy document in the area of drug misuse, the 1971 Report of the Working Party on Drug Abuse, and despite vast expenditures on criminalization and repressive measures directed at producers, traffickers and consumers of illegal drugs, the evidence now shows that we have completely failed to effectively curtail supply or consumption.
It is glaringly obvious that fundamental reforms in both national and global drug control policies are urgently needed.
In the current economic climate, the issue of drug policy is all too easily swept under the carpet by our politicians, who instead prefer to focus on budgetary cuts as a means of addressing our massive fiscal deficit. What our politicians apparently fail to recognize however, is the economic idiocy of continuing to pour hundreds of millions of euros of taxpayers money into failed drug policy.
Wasteful government expenditure on futile supply reduction strategies and incarceration displace more cost-effective and evidence-based investments in demand and harm reduction.
Without a doubt, the current bull headed anti-drug crusade will go down as among the greatest follies of modern times.
The time has come for Ireland to radically reassess our approach to drugs. The war on drugs is based on a set of ideas which have never been adequately explored or reviewed, principally the notion that problems arising from drug use can be tackled by policy measures which are aimed at controlling the supply of illicit drugs. All the data suggests that in fact the opposite is true, that policies of prohibition exacerbate social problems such as organized crime, sex trafficking, and drug related infections, while doing nothing to reduce drug related deaths and addiction rates.
Throughout the world, a punitive regime of prohibition has turned streets into battlefields resulting in uncontrollable overcrowding in our prisons.
Studies have also consistently shown that policies of prohibition and criminalization, create a situation where the most substantial barrier to offering treatment to the addict population is the addicts' fear of arrest, therefore hindering our ability to treat those who are in greatest need of treatment.
Our current approach to drugs has done nothing to reduce the availability of drugs, the rates of addiction, drug related deaths or drug related infections. For decades astronomical sums of Irish taxpayers money has been poured into a policy which can no longer reasonably be accepted as being in any way sensible. In Ireland, drugs today are more available than they have ever been, are worse quality than they have ever been, and as a result are responsible for more deaths than at any other time in our history.
In defense of prohibition, it has been suggested that no one has ever believed illegal drug use could be entirely eliminated, however there was a defensible view that prohibition could prevent more harm than it caused. Such a defense can no longer be reasonably accepted, as innumerable international studies have conclusively shown that the costs of drug prohibition now far outweigh any possible benefits the policy may bring.
It is time for a radical shift in policy.
The failed 'war on drugs':
According to a massive 2009 study by the European Commission, the 'war on drugs' has not reduced the production, trafficking, availability or use of drugs. The research project said the prices of drugs have fallen significantly in western Europe, by as much as 10%-30%, despite massive efforts and investment in law enforcement.
Similarly sobering conclusions were reached by the Global Illicit Drug Markets Report 1998 to 2007, which found that "there is 'no evidence' that the global drug problem has reduced", that "there is a 'lack of evidence' that controls (crop eradication, seizures and arrests) can reduce total global production or trafficking", and that "little is spent on prevention and existing programmes have little effect".
Critical studies of drug policies in other countries have generally concluded that drugs have been irrationally demonised, that is they have been regarded in an exaggerated way as corrupters of otherwise well-functioning societies, and that our current policy of prohibition fails to recognize that wider social and situational needs such as poverty, housing, health, education and employment prospects are as fundamental to reducing drug use as addressing supply.
A recent report released in June of this year by the Global Commission on Drug Policy also argues that the decades-old "global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world". The Commission includes former heads of state of several Latin American countries such as Colombia, Mexico and Brazil, the Prime Minister of Greece, George Papandreou, former Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, former State Secretary at the German Federal Ministry of Health, Marion Caspers-Merk, as well as several high profile social rights activists and business moguls like Richard Branson.
The report outlines the folly of continuing criminalization and prohibition policies, and makes several key recommendations to Governments. The report recommends that Governments:
* "End the criminalization, marginalization and stigmatization of people who use drugs but who do no harm to others"
* "Explore models of legal regulation of drugs to undermine the power of organized crime and safeguard the health and security of their citizens"
* "Implement syringe access and other harm reduction measures that have proven effective in reducing transmission of HIV and other blood-borne infections as well as fatal overdoses"
* "Respect the human rights of people who use drugs. Abolish abusive practices carried out in the name of treatment - such as forced detention, forced labor, and physical or psychological abuse - that contravene human rights standards and norms or that remove the right to self-determination"
* "Begin the transformation of the global drug prohibition regime. Replace drug policies and strategies driven by ideology and political convenience with fiscally responsible policies and strategies grounded in science, health, security and human rights - and adopt appropriate criteria for their evaluation"
For reasons known only to themselves, the Irish Government have chosen to ignore the recommendations of the Global Commission on Drugs, discounting the vast experience and expertise of those behind the report. Instead the Irish Government seem intent to continue ploughing Irish taxpayers money into a policy which by all measures, has not and can not work.
A very brief history of Irish drug policy:
The first discussion of drug problems in an official Irish policy document is almost certainly that which is contained in the 1966 Report by the 'Commission of Inquiry on Mental Illness'. The overall conclusion of the commission, was that Ireland had as yet avoided such problems, although a cautionary note was sounded:
'the Commission considers that drug addiction could reach serious proportions in this country unless a constant effort is maintained to prevent the abuse of habit-forming drugs'
The commission accepted however that the treatment and rehabilitation of drug addicts was a legitimate function of the mental health services, although it favored the creation of a centralized, residential treatment unit rather than advocating that drug problems should be dealt with by generic, community mental health services.
Two years later, following the establishment of a special Drug Squad in the Garda Siochana and considerable media interest in drug problems in Dublin, the Minister for Health, Sean Flanagan, appointed a Working Party on Drug Abuse.
The Report of the Working Party on Drug Abuse was completed and made public in 1971.
It is interesting to note that in the Minister's prefatory comments, was included the opinion that 'persons who have become dependent on drugs â